CD-SHOP by Courtney Love on MUSIC by MGCK Music by UK Copyright Advice by The World
The
new TWELFTH
NIGHT 'VOICES IN THE NIGHT' Double CD is now available on Cyclops
Records. The album of previously unreleased material, includes 3 of
the earliest Twelfth Night tracks written and performed with 'Electra',
in that brief, but glittering period when she was their
lyricist/vocalist. If you like the words 'PROG' and 'ROCK' in the same
sentence, you'll like this. So, GO get it NOW! [SLEEVE
NOTES]
SEPTEMBER 2007
- 
- Where
do we begin?
With the last week of September:
Sun 30
Sept 2007 -
MGCK Music 
"Tales
of Hoffmann"
One good thing about living with JM is his library. You can walk into the back room (sporadically used as our 'studio') and pour over stacks of books from 'The Bible' to "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" (and all subjects radiating tangentially off to other horizons). On my last pass around the shelves, I found a book purchased in the Frankfurt Airport three summers ago. I was on my way to join Brad 'The Style Nazi' Boles in his house in Mykonos; aka, 'The Nazi Spa'. [[This 'nazzie' ref is not cryptic adulation to swaztikas and goose-stepping. Brad's intense 'skinny' sense means nothing but vodka and marinated fish are allowed past your lips on his premises (dependent on your sexual persuasion!). And if you wear the 'wrong thing' out (!!), heaven help you. He'll have you back 'in' before you can wail, 'But I don't have any LaCroix!!!!!!' In short, he won't be seen in public with a fat peasant. Although he has styled Madonna and Elton John, so.... go figure.
Anyway back to the book I found in Frankfurt: Paulo Coelho's 'Manual of The Warrior of Light'. Perhaps a bit 'airport-quick-grab', 'easy-read' jejune, but still, the book's heart is in the right place. So, on this Saturday afternoon, I employed one of the tried and tested techniques for taking your telepathic pulse:
Open a trusted tome at a random page.
The first phrase your eye falls upon, that's your message for the day.
My message for the day: ""To engage in any activity you need to know what you can expect, how to achieve your objective, and whether or not you are capable of carrying out the proposed task. "The warrior of light listens."""
Saturday night was spent tripping the light fantastically with 'Tales of Hoffmann', as in Albert. JM went out to the Rose Leaf and I dabbled with my kozmic self. When he came back in (quite early) at 1am, I was in a lovely, reflective and perceptive mood: all interesting thoughts welcome kind of thing. We had a wonderful Gurdjieff-ian chat til dawn and, yes, I did most of the listening.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri 28
Sept 2007 -
MGCK Music
If you
like WalMart, you'll LOVE Dubai!
Saw this program about 'DUBAI'... it looks like (and is!) a GIANT Shopping Mall... Makes WalMart look like a corner store.
Why anyone would think a 'shopping mall' is a nifty destination??? I don't know. But it seems this is the nature of the world right now. A consuming fever to just consume.
To remind you, it's not ALL about shopping.
------------------------------------------------------
Ran into Mal (Sound Engineer with The Full Moon Club) in the supermarket last night. Haven't seen him in a few months. He said he saw a Zeppelin tribute band, ' LED ASTRAY', at Cabaret Voltaire. It sounded like fun, but there are a few of these bands around. The one I heard about this summer; 4 females played the DOWNLOAD Festival under the group-guise, 'Lez Zeppelin'. Now that I'd like to see. And yes, we DID throw our hats into the ring for tickets for the real thing: the 'Ahmet Ertegun Tribute' Zep gig in London. 25 MILLION people hit the site bidding for tickets worldwide, and there are only 18,000 places or something like that. Still, you've got to be in it.
In the meantime, here's a BLAST from the PAST: PANTERA "COWBOYS from HELL" - This track another 'Medicine Man' reminds me of when we first met them like 20 years ago. With their manager 'Walter'.
followed by our ORIGINAL 'Medicine Man' video, which somehow, without any effort to tell people it's there has clocked up almost 4000 hits on You Tube. Funny world.
Still think it's such a great song by REDMAN
------------------------------------------------------
Wed 26
Sept 2007 -
MGCK Music
Nights
with the talented few:
Saturday night was the genius that is Brian Wilson @ The Festival Theatre. His band are the best; incredible musicians, clearly in love with his classic hits and other musical expressions. The audience was explosive with tremendous appreciation and passion as well.. so yeah.. it was a lively affair and reminded me, you CAN! burn your brain out with LSD and speed. It's OK, as long as you're a genius and write great songs and are smart enough to keep your name on them!
Last night was a Companies House Seminar at Dynamic Earth. No talent in sight. Apart from the views of a lovely early-autumn Scottish sky and the anecdote about someone once appointing a 'cat' as a company director, it was a very dry affair; full of dull-heads who fancy themselves as future Bill Gates-ian billionaires, with all the oligarchic trappings and STUFF they'll be able to buy when their business ship comes in. I left an hour before it's finale, walked all the way home, cleansing myself of that stale grey staid ' business community' environment. These people are SO fucking boring.
Which
brings me to that documentary on BBC2 the other night.
...Well.. TWO documentaries on the lives of extraordinary
people.
(The BBC are SO great! Count yourself LUCKY to pay your television license.)
First was Tony Wilson and Factory Records during
Manchester's legendary Hacienda period. I absolutely loved it when he
described my favourite flaw, 'We
never thought about making a profit. It was all about the creativity.'"
May be disastrous as far as the established
cornerstones are concerned, but oh so satisfying to the 'soul'. And
yes, Factory Records went under, but the legacy they left behind? As the
ad says, 'Priceless'.
The second
documentary, {or really the first, as it was on a few nights before,
recorded while we were out seeing Brian Wilson} detailed the life and
'defection' to the west of another soulfully kosmic, artistic genius: Rudolph
Nureyev. A prodigious talent (not to mention, a most gorgeous guy) who interpreted life through his art; i.e. danced like a god and
money was no object. The ART was all that mattered to these
people. The force of their expression. The creation of something extraordinary. Luckily, these
individuals found support for their particular madness from the people around
them, so were rewarded, regardless of fiscal carelessness. That's when you
know it's really good and it's really working.
Which
reminds me 'WHY'
I've so enjoyed working with ALTRES.
It's all about spontaneous creativity. The treasure is in the
moment. Complete freedom and complete discipline combined.
Their new double
'compilation' album
"TRIPPING THE DARK FANTASTIC..."
-
was
more or less launched at our May Edinburgh gig - and is now available through outlets
listed on their website . The
album (containing live and other recorded tracks) covers 2 decades of ALTRES'
creativity. It also looks good and sounds GREAT!!
Tripping away from Kozmic Space and back to...
...the eff-up-in-progress that is Planet Earth: I saw something on the news last night that tickled me, not as in 'tickled pink' but a kind of gruesome viscous sludgy colour: the newest Western guilt assuager; Carbon Offsetting. Every time, you board a flight and feel just a li'l bit guilty about the size of your disgusting planet-torturing slimy great carbon footprint, you can simply pay a 'fee' for having soiled our communal space and that fee can be something like by 14 for taking a flight, say, New York to London. This little penalty is then forwarded as a cash gift to some poor schmuck in the Third World, where Global Warming is having the worst effects.
The example given (which you may exercise whenever you fly your fat, possibly corpulent, ass from point to point on the map): Your 'Carbon Offsetting' cash gift could buy a farmer in India a 'bamboo foot pump' (!!). With this magnificent 'gift' the farmer could manually or 'footily' irrigate his fields. The translation: You get to sit in a 747, sipping some crystal beverage, watching fluffy clouds outside the window; he gets to stand all day pumping brown water with his feet into his globally-warmed drought-cracked fields. Your reward? You'll feel a little better about the world. His reward? Some subsistence crop that just may keep him and his 7 starving children alive. No mention of the dead tigers and other rarer-by-the-day creatures this might help. )
You know... I must apologise. I don't really edit these pieces. I just chuck them out like a stream-of-consciousness.... Ok... verbal diarrhea, etc.. but at least I get it off MY chest and maybe get it into yours.
---------------------------------------------
Ok, yeah... I was all Gee-d up...
I really thought it mattered. All the indignation I felt at one more *sshole, pushing the human-termite philosophy of 'eat eat eat, build build build' into my consciousness. Almost penned another '!Disgruntled in Edinburgh!' letter to the BBC 24-Hour News. But after a few days evaluation, have to ask, does my indignation matter? One thing I realise: Not that many people care. The second thing I realise: I'll be dead some day... So, really... the problems of the planet, are not mine. If I can blind-eye the enormously distressing events I sense and see all around me, I'll be Ok until that foot is in the dust.
--------------------------------
Crop circles on the beach?? I saw them at Portobello
and there's Berwick Law through the buds...
[all photographs by Electra Sept 07]
Sat
22 Sept 2007 -
MGCK Music
Some Revolution...
I read in one of the broadsheets
that 2008 will see more 'development' around the globe than all of the 1980's and 1990's put
together!!! They're going to chop down every tree, steal every drop of
pure water and pollute every remaining river. And the oceans?? Forget
about the oceans. Already half dead. mmmm... maybe a good place for
new developments!
"BUSINESS MAN": They should change that title to 'EXPLOITER OF RESOURCES'. They have NO imagination. They do everything ' by the book' (Harvard Business School or whatever shithole their MBA came from) and they are entirely destructive.
With corporations towering where cathedrals once stood and the 'business men' enshrined and be-robed as the new diocese:
Some revolution is essential right now.
"DEVELOPMENT", The Insane Man's Bible: A title for a new book popped into my head while watching a BBC 24-Hour correspondent interviewing some bland be-suited schleb in some incredibly beautiful and until-now, untouched natural paradise on the globe. Under this nasty little schleb's name was the improbably pompous title 'Business Man'. His suggestion, (and how original is this??!) "Bring more tourists to the area!!" And to do that You NEED TO BUILD: airports, apartments, roads, sewage, lots of infrastructure; in short, pour more concrete!!; rip up everything and make more 'development'. My heart plummets every time I hear this word.
BUT..yesterday, the thing that REALLY peeled my brain: found in that hideous Metro mish-mash mutation - Daily Mail meets VIZ - (ok, occasionally they have a snippet of something that 'matters' in their dodgy dumbed-down easy-to-digest content for the public transportation commuter - tells you who they're marketing team think is taking the train and the bus!!):
Anyway...This story: "Naomi Campbell": that doyenne of all things eco and natural; the lady who did the ads against 'rare fur' in fashion one year and was trotting some almost extinct Siberian Tiger/Lynx carcass across her shiny tired anaconda-thonged ass the next; this monstrous self-absorbed creature, who, admittedly, has a face as beautiful as a black madonna, and a soul as black as Satan's shite -( yes, her) - has decided (wait for it) to become a DEVELOPER!?!!?! Fame and coke are clearly not enough!! Not when there's even MORE money to be scraped out of something still half alive. So, now she wants to build a MEGA Casino, for all her 'friends', like they've got nowhere else to fuck up??) on the Kenyan Coast, one of the last remaining RARE Sea Turtle safety zones in Africa!!!!!!!! The pissing woman isn't even FROM KENYA!!!! She's from Saff London!!!!
I
took this news deeply personally.
Just a year or so ago, I sponsored a Kenyan Sea Turtle nest
as a Christmas present for one of Fifi J's sons, 
who
loved receiving information telling of the progress of the hatchlings from egg
to the open sea. The thought that the turtles we helped keep alive and
nurtured with a protected place to grow in, and had guaranteed a safe
protected place to come
back to breed in, will be gravely disappointed when they find a flipping
""MEGA Casino!!!""
on their beach... This thought just burns my brain. So, you see....
Some revolution is essential right now. Some revolution of consciousness, of values, of choices made, of things 'admired'. Some revolution of 'seeing' and understanding and doing. Some revolution...
It's really all coming down to 'smash-and-grab' by the few, meaning life and death for so many.
-----------------------------------------------------
http://www.wiitoob.com/viewer.php?id=yYGHR7Z9WMI
found this on the web... somebody linked the original 'Medicine Man' video to their website... Wiitoob?? What's that?
And Bilderberg 'bad news' links. Makes you wonder what the 'good news' is.
[The sad truth about this planet? The people who are insane are running things.]
------------------------
Thurs
20
Sept 2007 -
MGCK Music
You May Ask 'Why'?..
I used to participate in and go to a lot of local gigs and write a lot about local bandsby singer-songwriters; any form of musical entertainments I was viewing. I also used to do a radio show on LeithFM and although the option to do a monthly show or a once-in-a-while pre-recorded thing has been put to me by the management... I donby t know... I'm looking for something 'else' right now. Something 'elsewhere'.
August was a month of so much hyper-involvement and, as always, September is a slow down. So.. now I spend a lot of time 'in', wondering if I should get my ailing keyboard repaired (needs new pads), reviewing the hundred songs I've written in the last 2 years and not produced and then wondering if I should just go to another country, for a while. I was hankering after a trip to Berlin, as I'm currently absolutely overwhelmed with a passion for that post-'89 Wall-coming-down generation of Berliners who developed Neu Deutsche Harte Metal; of which RAMMSTEIN are probably the most conspicuous..
So, until I get the courage
to explore the possibility of a KRAUT ROCK holiday, as a budding Marlene
Dietrich looking for a smoky cafe to 'chanter ma chanson,' I'll
have to go with what I know.
Next week (or week after... ) weby ll be back in Madremanya for the last
summer-sailing 'round the pristine marine nature preserve of Illes Medes (where you are not
allowed to drop anchor - no matter who you are.. Roman Abramovich, you can f*ck
RIGHT off), some art in the winding gothic streets of Torroella de Montgris
courtesy of Mischa and Nance Dunev and, goddammit, I'm gonna ride a horse,
through some beautiful forests where there are no people. That for me will
be peace and poetry.
For those of you who are homesick, hereby s a photo
from Poland by taken by Agnieszka Lekawa.
[This
looks such a beautiful peaceful place.. yet the people who are from there, all
want to come here??!!!]
Her notes: by by Karkonosze
(a mountain range in Sudetes) - the Polish-Czech border cuts the mountains into
two.by by Hyperlink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karkonosze
To
the Lighthouse: This lovely place is still For Sale! Tayportby looks across the mouth of the Tay to the Bridge and Dundee.
Dundee is cool. Good music scene too. Lovely people. Beautiful views. Nice size. I might write more music and write more ABOUT music, if I lived in Dundee.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sat
15 Sept 2007 -
MGCK Music
Brrrrr... winter's coming..
and I'm wondering what to wear. Should I shrink into pink?
I've taken a shine to Alma's Blog Spot. It's in Spanish, but if you can read it, it's thoughtful and charming. She chooses lovely images as well.. Obviously 'manipulated' images.. but that's ok. Here's a tiny bit of Alma:
"La
energby a es un remedio que prolonga la vida.
La mente es un aspecto del Espby ritu que controla la energby a.
Por tanto si podemos aprender a usar la mente para controlar la energby a,
podemos convertirnos en brujos."
------------------------------------------
[Which reminds me, I've received a 'gift' of a new camera, and i'm not sure I like it. Will have to check out the photos, but it's not just that, it's the whole 'problem' with 'newth'. The camera does a whole shitload of things that I don't need it to do, other than just taking pictures. Why? It burns battery energy like there's no tomorrow and it has no 'eye-viewer', like the 'feature three year olds love' the 'viewing screen' is all you need to judge your shot. No. There is a subtle connection between your 'eye' and the frame'. That is a matter of creative choice. A 'screen' is a matter of manufacture. So.. although the camera wasn't necessarily 'cheap'.. it feels kinda cheap to me. We'll see, I may be seduced.]
For things to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon: Save The Tiger, or non specifically, the British Ecological Group are good places to start, plus http://www.worldwildlife.org/
I get the ROLLING STONE notices monthly to my inbox. How I got listed as wanting them, I am no longer sure. Once I LOVED Rolling Stone. But now, well... A thought came to me :
Once the popular music industry had TWO faces; The vast gaping Red Sea between teeny-bop TIGER-BEAT and the uber-stoner cool ROLLING STONE. In the last 10 years, those cultures have morphed. Teeny-bop meets rock.. and it's kinda poppy and rocky and and wet wet all over. And I'm kinda through with it.
---------------------------------
Sun
9 Sept 2007 -
MGCK Music
September: a month of contradictions...
How 'bout a nice calm photo of the Firth of Forth taken yesterday evening.
and a message left on a car (not ours!) parked too close to someone's drive, in North Berwick yesterday afternoon,
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good-bye to AUGUST 2007 - and all her many Festival moments (Food & Flowers, Edinburgh Fringe, Elemental Arts, V Fest, Thirlestane Horse Trials!! Phew! It's ALL there!
So, if you're looking for LAST MONTH's stuff -
Go to Last month's labour of love: !August! 07
Still smokin'!!!!
=========================================================
BE THERE...... or BE SOMEWHERE ELSE! 
If you don't know how.. take
lessons
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNOFFISHAL SITE ARCHIVES: Current 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012
2011 2010 2009-in-ONE-BIG-BITE! 2008: Dec-Nov-Oct-Sept-Aug 08 Jul-Jun-May-Apr 08 Mar 08 Feb 08 Jan 08 2007: Dec 07 Nov 07 Oct 07 Sept 07 Aug 07 July-June-May 07 Apr 07 Mar 07 Feb 07 Jan 07 2006: Dec 06 Nov 06 Oct 06 Sept 06 Summer 2006 May 06 Apr 06 Mar 06 Feb 06 Jan 06 2005: Dec 05 Nov 05 Oct 05 Sept 05 Aug 05 July 05 June 05 May 05 April 05---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SPACE: The FINAL FRONTIER! Always an eyeful: The Universe Today
Sites worth a visit and support are: http://www.adbusters.org and Be an 'Antipreneur' - anti-corporate - self-motivated activist: http://adbusters.org/metas/politico/antipreneur/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright ©
MGCK Music -all rights reserved.92503 HK
